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  The Colonel reached into the left inside pocket of his suit jacket and produced a cigar.

  “All I have is a fine cigar that I was saving for this evening.”

  The third man was missing half his right ear, and he had fresh stitches on the bridge of his nose. “That’ll do. And we’ll take your wallet and watch too.”

  The Colonel looked calmly into the man’s eyes. He put the cigar back in his pocket, then pressed three numbers and the “send” button on his phone. The men stared at him. The big man pulled a knife from his coat pocket. The blade flicked into place. It was very dirty near the haft, and the tip had snapped off recently.

  As the big man took a step toward him, the Colonel stood his ground. He spoke slowly and clearly into the phone. “Yes, nine one one? There has been a terrible accident. Three men are injured.”

  The two men who had been flanking him stopped in their tracks. The Colonel continued.

  “One has a lacerated spleen and blunt force trauma to the skull. The second has a broken leg, crushed larynx, and a fractured mandible. The third has a stab wound to the left lung and both his testicles are ruptured. Please send medical personnel immediately to the alley beside the Cornice building on Twenty-Second Avenue.”

  The flanking men backed away, keeping their eyes on the Colonel. The big man’s jaw tensed as he heard the echo of his friends’ footsteps against the brick buildings, running back down the alley to the shopping cart. He folded his knife carefully into his palm, put it in his pocket, and backed away in the same direction.

  The Colonel watched him leave, tossed the cell phone into the dumpster, and walked out onto the sidewalk. An old man who was hosing vomit off the sidewalk in front of a bar stopped spraying the concrete as the Colonel walked by. The Colonel nodded at the courtesy.

  He headed down the block, removed another phone from his coat, and called Luis.

  “Did you get the pepper spray, the flash bangs, and the suppressors?”

  “I did.”

  “Come pick me up at the…” he looked up at a backlit sign.

  “Cafe Olé. We’ll go over the plan again. We will take the first two houses this weekend.”

  He stepped into the cafe. The sound of sirens rose in the distance.

  5

  Otis M. Gaverill reclined in a supple leather chaise, watching a wall-mounted, seventy-two-inch high definition TV. On the screen, his son Ben shot a three to put his high school basketball team within seven points of their archrival. He had watched the game a dozen times before, but it was just as exhilarating. It was like people said, your kids give you higher highs and lower lows than anything you experience yourself.

  He switched it off, knowing that Benny went on to score thirty-one points and win the city championship. Now that Ben was off at a college on the west coast, Otis kept in touch as much as life allowed. But he wanted his son to make his own way in the world. Under no circumstances did he want him to come back and join the family business.

  The family business was pot. Not the musty dime bags of hippie culture, loaded with seeds and stems. Otis marketed hybridized, genetically-turbocharged designer blends of the world’s finest cannabis. Or as one of the more creative members of his sales force called it, “a hydroponic, supersonic, catatonic herb guaranteed to make you more mellow than Jell-O.”

  Otis and his organization controlled three hundred and eighteen grow houses in and around Salento. And with marijuana being the largest cash crop in the US—worth more than corn and wheat production combined—it was well worth their while.

  Because of the amount of money to be made, law enforcement agencies estimated that most major metropolitan areas had hundreds of grow ops. Salento was no exception. But Otis’s operations were in a class all their own. Every one of them generated at least three million dollars annually. Six percent of the houses were busted every year. Those were easily replaced. What wasn’t easy to replace was good men. And Otis had just lost four in an unexplained explosion on the north side.

  He turned to J.A., his right hand man.

  “Any idea what happened?”

  J.A. scratched his neck and glanced at the three other men in the room. “Not a clue, Big O. We’ve just started to get some intel from our connections in the PD. It’s looking like a bomb of a sophisticated nature. We know that Terence and his guys weren’t diversifying. There was no debris that would suggest it was even a regular place they hung out.”

  Otis folded his hands in front of his mouth and took his time to consider the data. He was Big O to his men. O “the Show” to the various branches of his business network. And O.M.G. to his rivals.

  His business plan was simple. He kept to marijuana. And he controlled all aspects of his operation, from R&D to production to sales. An MBA—he had several in his organization—would call it vertically integrated. When there was an inkling of a competitive threat, he eliminated that threat in a gruesome, violent manner which resonated throughout the gutters of the city for years.

  Otis knew that a bullet to the head didn’t send a message like a wood chipper did. So when he’d found it necessary to take out a rival, he did it in an excruciating, memorable manner. Over the course of the last decade he had used fire ants, a crème brûlée torch, a steamroller, and a lithotripter to dispatch competitors. Usually he sent the victim’s followers an email with a link to a microsite where they could view a video of the event. It was a very effective tactic.

  The violence was never traced back to Otis, so he wasn’t a priority target of law enforcement. Other organized crime elements could have the meth trade, crack, special K, subbies, yellow jackets, smack, rocket fuel, and blow. Otis knew that by specializing in a recreational drug that many saw as harmless, he’d be lower priority for the law, and he could make inroads into wealthy circles who often influenced the Salento City Council to concentrate on more urgent criminal elements.

  He took a deep breath and let it out.

  “Okay. Let’s find out what’s going on. As you know, I am in favor of the free-market model when it comes to laundering our revenue but not when it comes to generating it. If someone’s making a move on our organization, I need to know who it is.”

  He motioned to Phineas, his quartermaster.

  “Phin, make sure we’re weps-ready for whatever adversity might be coming our way.”

  Phineas nodded, “You got it, Big O.”

  “J.A., what varieties do we have ready for cultivation before month end, and what are the quantities?”

  J.A. consulted an encrypted document on his smartphone.

  “We have the usual crops of Northern Lights, Original Skunk, Master Kush, and White Widow. All of these should yield the tonnage we need for a good final quarter. The Holland’s Hope isn’t doing near as well indoors, so we’re going to restrict it to the acreages outside the city.”

  “Good, good. And the smaller houses have the NYC Diesel and Strawberry Cough?”

  “You know it,” J.A. nodded.

  Both varieties gave off strong aromas while growing to maturity, so they were grown in smaller houses with larger yards between them and the neighbors.

  Otis continued, “Do you think we’re in the running for the Cannabis Cup this year with that new hybrid?”

  J.A. checked his file again. “Looks like the maturity is about sixty days. I think we’ll want to run it by the tasting panel to get their final impressions. If it gets high fives from them, let’s float the entry. The THC levels are going to be well over twenty percent.”

  Otis thought for a moment, then motioned to J.A.’s brother Curtis. “Curt, get the marketing man thinking about some new names for the hybrid. None of the usual hackneyed Amsterdam references. I want something simple, classy, and out of the box for the category.”

  “The man’s got skills, Big O. I’ll get him on it.”

  Otis turned the TV back on, indicating the meeting was over. His men went about their business with a new urgency.

  6

  By th
e time Mitchell got to the station it was already starting to percolate. Tewks and his guys were plotting revenge for the golf ball incident. Everyone else was trying to make sense of the previous day’s bombing. Sandovan was pouring three styrofoam cups of what passed for coffee in the squad room.

  He piped up as Mitchell walked into the bullpen. “Hey, Mitchell, grab a cup. Hernandez is giving Nelson some advice on his love life. Oughta be good.”

  “I don’t know what will be harder to take, the coffee or the advice. But I’m game.”

  They went over to Nelson’s desk, where Hernandez was holding court. Dave Nelson was newly assigned to the squad. He was twenty-five years old and trying to make sense of his relationship. Eric Hernandez was an early—thirties veteran of both the force and every kind of dating scene in the heterosexual universe.

  Nelson had a pained look on his face. “It’s like she doesn’t even hear me. She’ll ask me what I want to do, and then she’ll just come up with something totally different out of the blue. I’m like a prawn to her.”

  Hernandez held up a hand as Mitchell and Sandovan prepared to jump all over Nelson. “Easy boys, I know it’s a fastball over the plate, but show some restraint. Nelson, pay attention. First off, a prawn is a big-ass shrimp. You mean she treats you like a pawn. Second, you need to be more assertive. Take control, dude. Don’t call her up and ask her what she wants to do. Tell her what you’re doing and then ask her if she wants to join you. Did you try the thing I told you to do in the sack?”

  Nelson turned beet red and looked at the worn lino on the squad room floor. “No. I can’t coordinate my thumb, my tongue, and my index finger like that. Besides, Lindsay isn’t that kind of girl.”

  Hernandez shook his head slowly. “Once they get a taste of that move, every girl is that kind of girl. The most important thing is to take your finger and…”

  Sandovan looked over Hernandez’s shoulder and suddenly broke up the lesson. “I think you’re right Hernandez. If we get a read on the type of explosives used in the laptop bomb, it’ll help us narrow the field. Oh, hey Cap.”

  Captain Miles Ramsey was six foot four and a veritable fountain of profanity. He wasn’t buying Sandovan’s diversion. “Nice try, Sergeant. How’s about I plant my fucking size twelve in your asshole and rip you a new one. Nelson, nobody gives a flying fuck that you can’t get your girlfriend off. And Hernandez, you’re a poster child for STDs, so go get your monthly penicillin shot, and then all of you shit-heels get on with this bombing investigation. The DA is threatening to give me a colonoscopy with the Hubble telescope if we don’t make some progress. I want some leads. If I don’t get leads, I’ll settle for all your nuts in a jar. Which still wouldn’t amount to enough testosterone to make a hamster’s dick hard. Prove me wrong, you bunch of pussies!”

  Mitchell got up from his chair and drained his coffee. “Good talk, Cap.”

  “Kiss my sweaty ass, Mitchell!”

  “Yes sir. In your office as usual? Or should we make a public example of me.”

  “If I was going to make an example of you, you’d be running safety crossing patrol seminars for the fucking school board seven days a week. Might make it difficult to find time to golf.”

  “Ouch. I’m on it, Cap.”

  “Good. Now fuck off.”

  They watched Ramsey exit the room, spreading sunshine in his wake. He passed an equally tall detective on his way out and paused to make small talk. Then both men laughed and slapped each other on the arm. The detective sat down two desks over from Mitchell.

  “Hey, Mitch, how goes it?”

  “Not bad, Sean. You?”

  “Ah, just waiting for the mass spec results on the explosives like all you guys. Cap seems pretty stressed. Did he give you guys one of his motivational ‘win one for the ripper’ speeches?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sometimes I wish he’d treat me the same as before. The man raises profanity to an art form.”

  Despite his caustic style, the captain respected all his men. But Sean Ryerson was the only man in the unit who received any kind of outward courtesy. He got the same kind of treatment from everyone in the building. The reason was simple: as a rookie, Ryerson had saved the lives of the entire day shift.

  Two months into the job, he arrived at the precinct one morning at the same time as a suicide bomber. They walked up the stairs to the entrance simultaneously. Ryerson noticed the man’s bulky overcoat and that he was perspiring even in the cool morning air. But it was the guy’s right hand that caught his interest. He was clutching a suicide switch.

  Ryerson tackled the man, grabbing the switch with both hands. Knocking the man senseless with a knee to the head, he then took an elastic wristband from his pocket and put it tightly around the suicide switch. It turned out to be a prescient tactic, because the bomber regained consciousness and crashed into him with a full load of adrenaline.

  They fell to the ground and the switch flew out of Ryerson’s hand, skidding across the pavement and coming to rest beside a planter of dwarf cedars. As Ryerson fought to regain the advantage with the bomber, several other cops rushed from the building, having been alerted by the building’s surveillance cameras. They overwhelmed the man and cuffed him. Another cop retrieved the suicide switch.

  It was impossible for the officer to miss the rainbow wristband that prevented the switch from detonating the bomb. And equally impossible to miss the word “PRIDE” embossed in it. Ryerson was outed.

  As a rookie, it normally would have been a disastrous setback. Some of the veterans on the force would have given the kid a hard time for the rest of his career—if he managed to tough it out. But in the context of the morning, there was no denying that Sean Ryerson had saved dozens of cops’ lives.

  The bomber’s vest was packed with explosives, roofing nails, and ball bearings. The man’s martyrdom video had been sent to city hall. Later it was discovered that his son had been implicated in a child prostitution ring, and the father was seeking revenge in the guise of religious fanaticism. No group took responsibility.

  Now Ryerson got up to grab a coffee. Mitchell started to type some emails and make calls to people he knew on the street. Every call came up negative. Nobody knew who was responsible for the warehouse bombing. But because of a complete left hand found at the scene of the blast they were able to get a fingerprint ID through AFIS—the automated fingerprint identification system.

  Mitchell relayed the good news to Sandovan. “Hey Eddie, looks like one of the hands was ID’d from the warehouse.”

  “No shit.”

  “Yeh. But get this, it wasn’t even a criminal hit. It came from a legit purchase of a handgun in Massachusetts. The thumbprint scan required for the purchase actually served a purpose.”

  “So who we looking at?”

  “The guy’s a truck driver. No criminal record except for half a dozen speeding tickets.”

  “Geez, my brother drives a truck, and he racks up a lot more than that.”

  Nelson piped up. “What about the registration on the pickup truck found at the scene?”

  “Registered to the same dude,” Hernandez replied. “He lived alone. Only known relative is a sister in Colorado who runs a mountain-biking eco-tourism outfit. She hadn’t seen him in years.”

  Sandovan got up out of his chair with a grunt. “I’m gonna talk to the guy’s neighbors and see if they can tell us anything more about him. He musta had friends or something.”

  Mitchell logged off his computer and joined Sandovan. “Hey, Sand, maybe we should hit some balls tonight on the driving range. It always helps me think. And you could use the practice.”

  Sandovan rolled his eyes. He picked up a stress ball from his desk and Mitchell flinched as it whizzed by his head.

  7

  Mya walked into Jak Mosley’s office to see if the creative director’s pulse and blood pressure had returned to normal after the Shalimar presentation disaster.

  “Hey, Jak. Any more pâté recipes you’d
like to share?”

  “Oh, hey Mya. No. Dunn told me I’d be out on the street if I ever did anything like that again.”

  “You know what they say, ‘He who angers me, controls me’.”

  “Wow, sounds like you’ve been in therapy.”

  “Nope, I’ve just been in enough relationships to know a little bit about human nature. Do you have a plan B for the Shalimar toilet paper campaign?”

  “Definitely. You might think I was out last night drowning my sorrows, but I came back to the office and worked until four this morning. I’m working on redesigning the whole campaign identity. Even started to design a proprietary font for all the materials. Check it out…”

  Mya examined the two Apple Cinema Displays on Jak’s desk. A number of letterforms were taking shape. It was an elegant serif font with highly distinctive ascenders and descenders.

  “I have to admire your resilience,” she said.

  “That’s what separates the hacks from the talent in this business.”

  She paused at his doorway, “Let me know if there’s anything more I can do from a planning standpoint. It’s not like toilet paper is rocket science, but if you need any more psychographic data or feedback from their research resources, just give me a shout.”

  “Thanks, Mya.” He mumbled his gratitude, already immersed in a social media application for the new campaign.

  Mya continued her walkabout through the halls of Dunn, Burgess & Taylor. She passed the media department, which despite having dozens of analysts in a maze of cubicles maintained a decibel level that would make a librarian proud. Each of the occupants was deep in analysis of target markets and cheaper ways to reach them. In contrast, the interactive division was like the creative department: a microcosm of nerdy chic, prone to long hours fueled by caffeine and energy drinks.

  When she finally arrived at the account planning offices, she stopped to fill her plastic bottle at the water cooler. It was almost full when she felt a hand on her right buttock. She was so startled that she dropped the bottle.